When the Lujiazui area of Shanghai's Pudong New District announced the opening of the Shanghai Cross-border E-commerce Public Service Co, on Jan 22, it marked the city's first move to set up a comprehensive cross-border e-commerce zone after getting State Council approval, on Jan 15.

The company's stated mission is to develop Shanghai's cross-border e-commerce business by setting up a electronic public service platform to help e-commerce export-import companies and third-party payments, logistics, and warehousing firms to exchange business data, and help the Customs, inspection and quarantine, tax and other related departments to deal with clearance approval procedures online.

In this way, e-commerce companies can handle customs clearance procedures via the platform without having to go around to different departments, and supervision departments can check information online in advance to shorten the time needed for customs clearances, from as much as two months to 10 days.

In addition, more e-services, such as foreign exchange settlements and tax rebate, will be carried out, according to one of the new company's managers, who went on to explain that the company was developed from an online trading platform, dubbed "Kuajingtong" that was launched by the Shanghai Orient Electronic Payment Co.

The company's opening ceremony also saw a cooperation agreement signed with many cross-border e-commerce companies, logistics firms, and financial institutions such as ymatou.com, and the Shanghai branches of China Post and the Bank of China.